For what the law was powerless(A) to do because it was weakened by the flesh,[a](B) God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh(C) to be a sin offering.[b](D) And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement(E) of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.(F)

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Footnotes

  1. Romans 8:3 In contexts like this, the Greek word for flesh (sarx) refers to the sinful state of human beings, often presented as a power in opposition to the Spirit; also in verses 4-13.
  2. Romans 8:3 Or flesh, for sin

3-4 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

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For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh; God sending his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and of sin, hath condemned sin in the flesh;

That the justification of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

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For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

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